


Local flavor

by keeptheearthbelow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Contemporary AU, F/M, lots of tasty baked goods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 21:59:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4238073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeptheearthbelow/pseuds/keeptheearthbelow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a love song you sing with your mouth full. (100% fluff.) Written for Prompts in Panem round 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Local flavor

_Chevre-orange pound cake. Cheddar-pecan scones. Gouda and walnut biscotti. Mozzarella-stuffed fritters. Things that look like regular cinnamon rolls except that the sauce is made of mascarpone. Puffy rolls with smoked blue cheese baked into the top. Grilled cheese sandwiches with asiago and stilton, or with brie, strawberries, and basil._

Katniss turns slowly in a circle in the middle of the shop. Everything around her, in the display cases and on the menu boards, is some combination of cheese and bread, and the scents are making her mouth water. Is this place for real?

She shakes herself. She’s here to work. And she needs to get the owner’s attention before she has to compete with the crowds that’ll shortly be pouring in. Soft opening or no, this place is ten thousand times better than the chain bakery-cafe that used to be here, and it’s going to be slammed in less than half an hour.

The guy who opened the door for her – who looks awfully familiar, though she can’t put her finger on why (some kind of professional conference? high school?) is waiting, a glint of pride in his expression as he watches her. “Come on, he’s in the back.”

She follows the guy down the hallway past the kitchens – she wants to stop again, just to stand there with her eyes closed and breathe it in, but she doesn’t – down to the office in the back. “Hey bro,” her guide says, “the lady from the food cooperative is here.”

“Hi! Come in!”

Katniss can’t even see whoever is in the room behind crates of supplies piled on a desk, nearly crowding out a laptop and papers. But she says anyway, “Hi, I’m Katniss Everdeen, I’m with Taste of Home.”

There’s a thump inside the room and the crates on the desk wobble. “ _Ow_.” Then silence. Then a blond head appears and a man stumbles to his feet and turns to face her.

She recognizes this guy for sure, with or without the beet red face. “Um. Hi.”

“Peeta Mellark,” he says at the same time, and if possible blushes even deeper. He shakes her hand anyway, and his hand is solid in hers. “It’s really nice to see you again.”

“Your name isn’t on any of the papers,” she says in confusion. “I had no idea you were behind this place.”

“Oh, well, Haymitch Abernathy helped me out,” he says, and clears his throat. “It helped to have somebody local to handle all the paperwork because my brother and I couldn’t quite wind up our old business quick enough to jump on this. But it was my idea.”

She nods. His brother, that’s who the other guy is. _Remember to open with compliments, Everdeen. Be amiable._ But she doesn’t have to dig deep at all for this one. “So, everything smells amazing,” she confesses.

He looks at her as if it’s a genuine compliment and not a patent fact. “Really? Think so?”

“I do.”

He beams. “You have to let me get you some of the cheese dumplings before you go. They’re in browned butter.”

She thinks her knees may have just buckled slighty. “Oh. Yes. Wow. But first, um, I wanted to talk to you about, well, what you just mentioned, about being local. Now that you’re getting established here. Or reestablished.”

He had gone to school with her all those years, after all, and this place is like the theme-park version of the cheesy pastries he used to hand out in class sometimes. And he looks even better than she remembered. Why did he have to up and leave for culinary school, especially before it ever occurred to her that when she found him looking at her across the room, she could go over and try talking to him?

She holds out her folder, hoping to keep herself on track, especially since he’s staring at her a little. “I wanted to make sure you know that there are so many local cheese producers. All within a hundred-mile radius, interested in supplying local businesses, with existing networks of customers and fans. I’d guess you depend on a lot of imported cheese right now.”

He’s nodding, agreeing with her. “I definitely want to connect to anybody local. It’s been easier to use the same suppliers I did in the city, just during the startup phase, since Haymitch, you know, only does beverages.”

“He sure does. Well,” _(don’t stop talking at yes, Everdeen, follow through and help them feel good about it)_ , “if you’re open to considering new suppliers, we can help. Taste of Home got started just by connecting folks who’re food insecure with fresh produce, which has stayed a really important part of what we do. But we’ve built up to really be about providing for our whole community, with our own food economy, with local pride. And we try to meet with all new business owners early on, but Hamitch just said he was partnering with some out-of-towner … maybe he never passed on the messages.”

Peeta rolls his eyes. “Haymitch. Good god.” He’s flipping through the pages in the folder. “Look at all this. None of this was here when I left. Wait, somebody’s growing wheat, and milling it? Oh my god. I just, you know, set this up as fast as I could because I’d been looking for a chance to move back, and the space came available and … wow. I can tour these dairies? Can we do that?” He glances up hopefully.

“Sure, anytime.” _We?_ Why had he said _we_? “We have such amazing food here, you know. Mostly when I visit the foodie Meccas I just think I pay a lot more.”

He closes the folder. “I really wanted to come home.”

“No need to leave, is what I’m saying,” she fumbles.

But he doesn’t seem to mind. He looks aside, and swallows hard, and looks back at her and says, “I mean, you still like cheese buns, right?”

↔

“And that,” she tells the kids, “was your father’s most creative love letter to me. A whole shop full of cheese buns. But he says I was singing him a song he didn’t even know was calling him home.”


End file.
